


Han-Seibutsu

by RealityXIllusion



Series: Hakuba against the World [1]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Character Study, Child Neglect, Coyote-Wolf Hybrid, Discrimination, Gen, Hakuba Saguru Appreciation, He's a Eastern Coyote, Hybrid!Hakuba, It it wasn't clear Hakuba is a Coyote-Wolf Hybrid, One Shot, POV Hakuba Saguru, Shifter!Hakuba, hakuba needs a hug, sad hakuba
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:15:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27932950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RealityXIllusion/pseuds/RealityXIllusion
Summary: Han-Seibutsu, creatures of Japanese folklore that are half-human and half-animal. Forgotten by the world and nearly extinct, Han-Seibutsu (Mostly in Japan) become known as omens warning of evil to come.Hakuba never asked to be some omen... he never asked for any of this.
Relationships: Hakuba Saguru & Loneliness
Series: Hakuba against the World [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2045392
Kudos: 24
Collections: DCMK Collection





	Han-Seibutsu

**Author's Note:**

> So it's a little after 3:00 in the morning and I am so tired but the idea for this hit me out of nowhere and I couldn't help but I wrote this out real quick. I'm definitely going to come back, and perhaps rewrite a few parts but for now this is it.  
> This is a one shot but I plan on adding a bunch of one shots to this series all centered around Hakuba being a Han-Seibutsu.

A fairytale occasionally told at daycares until the school board decided the tale was too outlandish to keep telling little kids.

While the rest of the world seemed to forget about a part of its history, some distinct families made sure to pass the stories on—stories of the Han-Seibutsu.

Han-Seibutsu, creatures of Japanese folklore that are half-human and half-animal. Over the past five centuries, while the name had stayed the same, its meaning did not. Most Han-Seibutsu no longer looked like their more feral halves. Instead, they all appeared human. The only hint towards Han-Seibutsu ever existing were old myths and folklore the elderly passed on from one generation to the next. Before that, the tradition died out. Few, possibly one out of a hundred at most, Han-Seibutsu’s were born with some characteristics of their other halves bar the eyes. Depending on the animal, a Han-Seibutsu’s eyes could range from pupils as slits to being blown wide to the point of obscuring any eye color. As a Han-Seibutsu, the odds of inheriting your animal self's enhanced senses were rare and practically unheard of.

However, that did not mean it was impossible.

Very few have been born with such features, those who had the misfortune of having the body… additions were usually kept in isolation. Cut off from the world.

There was a difference between knowing the family genes carried the Han-Seibutsu trait and having an heir born for the first time in hundreds of years with ears and a tail. Most of the Hakuba and Evans family tree consisted of normal human-looking ancestors, perhaps one or two being abnormally tall or having partially glowing eyes in portraits but never had anyone been born, within the records, with the ears and tail of their other half. The vast majority of family members did not believe the old tales their ancestors passed down from generation to generation.

The only reason why they continued with informing new family members of the stories was simply that it had become a well-known tradition.

When he first heard about his ancestors having essentially a part of their soul belonging to an animal, he took his mother's word with a grain of salt.

Despite how young he had been when he first heard the story, he was already applying logic and scientific meaning to everything he encountered.

It wasn't until he was old enough to attend a preschool that he realized the truth of his mother's warnings. None of the other children had ears on their heads. None of the other children had tails sticking out from the base of their spine. He simply thought that the other children were hiding their ears like his mother told him to do. Apparently, pulling on another kid's hair to try and see where his ears were was enough of a scare for his mother to pull him out of preschool and start homeschooling at a young age.

He was a Han-Seibutsu. 

At least that's the term his uncle had used after stopping by the house for a surprise visit and seeing Hakuba. 

He started telling the rest of the family after examining his animal traits, not even stepping fully through the doorway before turning and quickly leaving. It wouldn't have been easy to keep his Han-Seibutsu status a secret if people actually believed his uncle. However, seeing as they were practically forgotten by the world, it was easier than expected to brush his ears and tail off as a part of a costume. To brush it off as him simply playing as a child was known to do, lost in his own imagination.

Sadly, the same could not be said for brushing off his advanced IQ and eidetic memory.

He learned early that those older than him did not like that he knew more than them.

Years later, he found it ironic how the truth of him being a Han-Seibutsu, despite no one believing it, hadn't been the cause of him becoming the black sheep of the family as his mother and father feared. It was his intelligence that became his downfall.

Hakuba didn’t bother with trying to question his family on his animal side, even discreetly, not after they’ve all told him the same thing at one point or another, that he was more animal than he was human. No one may have believed his uncle, but they all certainly enjoyed enabling him and often compared Hakuba to various wild animals. He had to listen to them compare him to so many different animals during family gatherings that it wasn't until his 10th birthday that he finally learned what his other self was.

His 10th birthday was also the first time he ever fully shifted into his animal self.

According to his mother, he was an Eastern coyote—a hybrid mix of both a coyote and a wolf. Shifting was the first time he ever felt content with the knowledge that he was a Han-Seibutsu. It was an experience he never felt before. As he grew up, shifting became his salvation. Because of his… extra appendages matching his original hair color, if he kept his ears flat, then Hakuba found he could hide them easily enough by brushing his hair over them. His tail, he could have wrapped around his waist and under his clothing. Though he had to wear clothes that were a size or two too big and if that wasn't possible, he always had to have a jacket. He constantly felt constricted, always having to put on an act for those around him. As time went on and his animalistic instincts grew, he found he even had to start putting an act on around his own parents.

The tension between him and his parents grew worse with the divorce.

While his mother didn't seem bothered by him, preferring to stay in his wolf form for days on end, his father hated it. His father constantly yelled at him to stop shifting and to stop behaving like an animal. That he was a human boy and needed to start acting like it. It was why he chose to live in London with his mother all his father moved all the way to Japan. In those years, he barely saw or heard from his father at all. Hakuba didn't mind it. He wasn't sure how to feel about the comments he would accidentally overhear his father say in the privacy of his study.

It took him a few years, but he learned how to control himself as time went on.

He stopped any to all behavior that could resemble any animal characteristic. He learned to moderate his food intake and to slow down. To match his strength and speed with that of other boys his age. He became the well-mannered gentleman his father wanted… the type of person that the rest of his family expected of him. He could tell how his change and behavior made his mother happier as well, though she did insist that he shifted at least twice a month. It was hard to change the way he went about life, hard but not impossible. With time, he managed to build new habits while breaking others.

Gone were the instincts that came with being a Han-Seibutsu.

Gone but not forgotten.

* * *

He chose to uproot everything he knew and go live with his father in Japan after an incident running through his mother's land while shifted.

It was the first time his father came to visit, and in the end, his mother practically tossed him out the door.

Hakuba knew he worried them. It was the first time in years that he lost control over himself like that... it was exhilarating, yet he could see how terrified his mother was. Because of that, he left with no complaints on his part. Willing to do anything, she asked if it meant she would stop looking at him like _that_.

It’d been six months since he first arrived in Japan, and if there was one thing Hakuba realized during his time here, it was that the acceptance of his kind was less welcomed here than it was back in England. For some reason, in Japan, the belief in the existence of Han-Seibutsu was different. In Japan, the knowledge of the Han-Seibutsu was spread throughout each community with different variations of a warning. While no one seemed to believe they would ever come across one, they did not deny their existence. He didn't think he would have to worry about this.

He was wrong.

He realized this during his first week working with the task force. Just after a heist, Hakuba was walking towards Inspector Nakamori’s office to drop off his paperwork when he overheard the inspector joking around with a few of the other officers. Saying a few choice words about the Han-Seibutsu, while ranting about how someone who was recently on the news for killing four of his friends in a fit of rage was probably Han-Seibutsu having gone feral. What made Hakuba leave without even turning in his report was how Aoko, who showed up after the heist with snacks for everyone, seemed to agree with her father, as did all of the officers on the task force. That was the first time that he ever encountered discrimination towards the Han-Seibutsu outside of his family. Because despite the light atmosphere and the joking manner in which everyone spoke, it was still discrimination. For some reason, he had been fooling himself all these years. He didn't think that his mother's warnings about how the world felt toward even the suggestion of the Han-Seibutsu existing had any merit.

It made him paranoid. Worried that someone would take one look at him and somehow know.

Since then, Hakuba made sure not to get any closer with the task force members, keeping any personal information to himself as well. It took an off-hand comment from a random kid during a history lesson in school about the Han-Seibutsu for him to see the truth. He saw the disgust on his classmates' faces, including Kuroba Kaito’s, when the student in the front asked their teacher if any Han-Seibutsu were around in that era. Surrounded by people every day who hated his-his kind made it hard to live comfortably while in Japan. It was one of his main reasons for leaving so frequently to visit London, though he couldn’t say he was treated much better there as his aunt and her children on his mother's side moved in with his mother. Something about keeping her company now that he and his father had abandoned her.

With so many people being around him, whether he was in Japan or London, he couldn't shift.

He wasn't comfortable shifting when there was a chance someone might see him. It left him feeling out of place in his own skin.

After spending two weeks back home, Hakuba finally chose to return to Japan. He didn’t want to risk earning any of the teachers' ire for missing so much school. He assumed that returning to Japan would consist of the same old things. Going to school and attending any heists… he did not plan on becoming acquainted with either Edogawa Conan or Hattori Heiji. He certainly did not anticipate Kuroba Kaito becoming more than a classmate and Kid candidate either.


End file.
